Confederation
by Windswift
Summary: The only thing holding his little brother together is the fragile concept of a shared culture, and Prussia will try anything that might help. Or, Prussia acquires Kinder- und Hausmärchen for the nation that will one day claim them.


Disclaimer: Axis Powers Hetalia belongs to Himaruya Hidekaz

_**Confederation**_

He sleepwalks through the days, his head all at once breaking through the surface of the water in a startled rush as he finds himself breathing air. When this happens he takes a moment to push the dizziness away; it would be disconcerting, except that he knows, even if he can't recall, that the rest of the day has preceded in logical order.

He is lying on his stomach on the floor of the sitting room, which isn't at all dignified, and his fingertips smell green like the stems of the cornflowers scattered around him. A light pressure tickles against the top of his ear, and when he reaches up to investigate, his fingers return clutching a crown woven out of more blooms. He sits up, drapes the chain over his knee, and catches a flash of the same blue from the corner of his eye-Prussia passing behind the back of a chair, dressed in full uniform.

"You're training again?" he calls after Prussia. "Shouldn't I come too?" Then he bites the inside of his cheek and looks away, down at the flowerheads. They've a bruised, crumpled look, as if they've been sitting around for hours and lost their freshness. "It must be terribly embarrassing, sharing a house with someone like me. Disgracefully weak. I-I don't see why you humor me."

Prussia stops and half-turns and stares at him with a look that would be unreadable, one that he doesn't know enough to interpret, even if he had raised his head to see it. "Your health's still poor, West." He has other names, but that's how Prussia prefers to address him. "You shouldn't strain yourself. Even worse than being weak is being stupid."

The door clicks shut as Prussia leaves, and then instead of the flowers he sees his hand stretched behind him, resting on the doorknob as he stands inside the library.

Prussia is a born soldier, so the library always strikes him as incongruous-or rather, Prussia with his loud laugh and his loud boots and his brilliantly blue uniform adds a touch of the absurd to this house of delicate and refined things. Prussia glories in fighting, physicality, the tangible grit of life. He has antsy hands and an antsy mind and no patience for higher things; he scoffs at others who would spend their time learning from books rather than from campaigns.

And yet Prussia entrusts him to the library-a whole room with shelves devoted to books on all sorts of subjects, even a section consecrated for Prussia's own childhood journals-with soldier-straight shoulders. He maintains the room with militaristic neatness, and indulges his little brother without his having to ask.

The question must have scrawled itself upon his face at that first introduction as he stood in the doorway, hesitating, because Prussia scratches his cheek and doesn't meet his eyes. A rich warmth colors his voice as he admits, "You're right, normally I don't like this stuff, but, well, I wanted to know you've got a good future ahead of you. I had a boss who-anyway, maybe you don't need to be a soldier yet. For now I can take care of that for you, as your awesome brother. So you should just study hard-you like that kind of stuff, right?"

He does like the books, much more than muskets. They captivate his hands and his eyes and his mind for hours at a time, even when he can't recall the words later. He suspects Prussia likes that about books-they keep him in the house, away from prying eyes. "You don't need to meet anyone else yet," he always says. "Your health is fragile, so don't endanger it. Get stronger first, and then I'll teach you to be like me."

He's not sure how books will make him strong enough to live up to his brother, when Prussia also says that stuffing your nose in books and music and tea parties turns you into a sissy aristocrat who doesn't remember what his nation was made _for_. And it's funny, just a bit, because he swears that through the lacy drapes of the library windows he can see curious eyes peering in from time to time. Whether he's a secret or a spectacle, he expects everyone knows about him already; when they visit the house he is sent to his room, but after the extra voices have left he catches them in the yard, staring up at his window as he looks down on them-France, Austria, and other hazy names besides.

"You're not ready yet. They'll take you apart. Do you want to fall ill again?"

He doesn't remember being ill, but surely it happened. Surely illness bleached the pallor in his skin, stretched him thin and bony and long-limbed, swaddled his head and ears with the cotton that leaves him sleepwalking through the waking world behind a gauzy veil, of which he occasionally catches glimpses when the breeze gusts to lift the shroud.

In the middle of the library Prussia has set a chair for him and a small table where he can pile the books he's reading. Today a tidy stack already waits for him, and like a dream he hears Prussia say, with calculated disinterest: "Someone mentioned these to me. Thought you might like them, so I'll leave them out for you." He doesn't add _let me know what you think of them, I hope I managed to pick something you'll enjoy_, but he'll tell Prussia anyway, the same way that the smile he gave to Prussia then blooms on his face now at the memory.

His shoes are gone; he pulls up both his knees and sits cross-legged, although he's an awkward fit, so that he can rest a book in his lap and run his fingers over the pages. He twists to take a book from the table and pulls the one from the top without looking at the cover. Once he turns the first page he devours the books, wholly and ravenously, not even sure what he is reading-and today is no exception. But his ears buzz and pound and his whole body heats up and he feels-something. A something that is far more important than the words, mere ink on the page. Pictures flood his mind that he can't articulate, some of them pictures that aren't even in the text of the books.

The stories are just supposed to be a record, their own history, pressed dry and flat between the pages of the tome, but it's taken on a life of its own and seized him with it.

He shuts the back cover with a thump and doesn't even pause for breath before he flips it over and begins again, eager to pour himself into the stories-to let them pour into him. The folktales bring a rush of color to his washed-out cheeks, and as he hunches over the volume the shroud slips from his head and falls to the floor. He wakes up, really wakes up, sitting there trembling with life. The world illustrated by the books is so much more real to him than the garden outside and the vibrant cornflowers he knotted into chains.

His eyes aren't really focused on the words, he knows, aren't processing them as anything more than familiar letters. But his lips are moving, sounding out the stories and reciting them as if he's learned them all by rote already and they're written on his heart, and with more strength and enthusiasm than the last he tells himself each one.

It must be that hubbub, so uncharacteristic of him, that brings Prussia to the library upon his return to the house, his face just as flushed and exhilarated as his West's-although there are lines on Prussia's that he knows aren't crinkled into his own features. He jerks his head up to tell Prussia-everything-but there are too many words, too many pictures. They swell up and stop his open mouth; he can't even begin to stutter.

The lines melt out of Prussia's face, and he guesses correctly, "You like those sorts of stories, huh?" Prussia reaches out a hand and ruffles his hair, although he's far too tall for Prussia to be doing such things, it seems. "I'm sure I can find you more."

Prussia leaves, and he sets the book aside, his rapt enchantment broken for the moment. The veil slips back over his face and his ears, like the curtains on the windows that neither keep everything out nor everything in.

And he sleepwalks through the days with blue eyes not always bright, but his cheeks are kept in color by the beating of his heart, pounding to the rhythm of the household tales.


End file.
